Heat Haze Days
by MouseMaster42
Summary: When Naru comes down with a fever, he starts getting nightmares and beings to relive Gene's death. As the dreams continue, he discovers that he can manipulate them to some degree and sets out to attempt to save his brother. Inspired by a song.


**Inspired by the Vocaloid song "**_**Heat-Haze Days**_**" (wow, I'm original, right?), alternately titled Kagerou Days or Mayfly Days. It's –bleeping- depressing, but it's also really inspiring and interesting. If you have the time, check it out and see if you can figure it out. I listened to it, and the first thing I thought of was Naru. I don't know why, but I really felt like trying to write this. I'm sort of happy with how it turned out.**

**Wow, my last GH fic was **_**Green Headlights**_**…huh. I guess this is sort of similar. Anyway, I don't own Ghost Hunt (it belongs to Shiho Inada and Fuyumi Ono) or Vocaloid (but I'm not sure who that belongs to…)**

**Please read; I'm hesitant to say 'enjoy' because it's intended to be a bit sad, but at least be interested; and review!**

**xXx**

**Heat-Haze Days**

**xXx**

**Naru's POV**

You and I were standing at the side of the road. The weather was incredibly nice; hot to the point of being suffocating. The sun was like a physical weight on my shoulders and the heat was an invisible curtain that shimmered across the asphalt. Amidst the slightly sickening rays of sunshine, I turned to look at you, realizing that you were next to me, and you were alive.

We had no reason to be out next to the road other than the basic reason that we had nothing better to do. I was still obsessed with the fact that you were alive. I realized that my vision wasn't green, that this dream wasn't going the way it usually did. The heat was new, and everything was sharper: almost like I was experiencing it for the first time. After some hesitant experimenting, I found that I still had my voice, and I tested it out, wondering if—somehow—you could hear me.

"Gene," I whispered, and I heard my voice shake a little despite itself. I had never been able to talk to you like this since the accident. The dream was going differently. I tried to think about where I had fallen asleep; wondering what could be causing this extreme, dazzling heat to permeate my subconscious like this. Had I used an extra blanket, or had I fallen asleep in the office under the heating vent?

You grinned at me, that boyish grin that used to be on both of our faces in family pictures. You reached your hand out towards me, and I lifted my arm from my side to brush my fingertips against yours. In the moment that our skin touched, I forgot about the dream, and I concentrated only on the physical touch that I somehow tricked myself into feeling. Your hands felt like memory; exactly as they should. Your fingertips were warm. Warm, and identical to mine. Our hands lined up perfectly.

You let your arm drop after a moment and tilted your head up to look at the blue sky. "Y'know," you said offhandedly in English; that bold, confident tone that I remembered so well still in your voice. "I kind of hate summer. Always have."

"Me too," I replied, looking out over a pale, crystal blue lake that sparkled in the oppressing sunlight. I was so immersed in the dreamscape that the significance of the lake was completely lost on me. I was simply happy that—for once—I was more than an observer. I was interacting with you, even if it was only in a dream.

There was a rustling in the bushes behind us, and you and I turned in unison to see a small black cat spring out. We looked at one another curiously, and the cat padded over to your leg and rubbed up against your pants. After a few minutes, it started to nibble on your shoelaces and you yelped and scooped the creature up into your arms.

I smiled, and reached across you to touch the cat's head—startled by the realness of its fur—and scratch it behind the ears. It erupted into purrs, and your triumphant face was mirrored in mine.

But then the cat started to squirm. Before either of us could stop it, it bit your hand and you dropped it onto the ground.

Laughing good-naturedly, you dashed after it, and I followed from a distance, feeling an awful sense of foreboding that made my stomach drop.

You pursued that cat as it ran away from you into the street, but I skidded to a stop at the roadside, frozen, unable to take in anything but the traffic light just ahead of you that had just changed to a glaring red.

Suddenly, a truck appeared out of nowhere and struck you.

The world seemed to flip as you screamed, a filter of green mixing with the sprayed blood, altering my perception. I stumbled back, a hoarse shriek tearing its way out of my chest as I found myself unable to look away from you, sprawled on the ground. The screaming wouldn't stop. I thought I was crying, and it was impossible to breathe—the air was too heavy. It was boiling, and it felt like I was drowning.

And then you were gone, and it was made all that much worse by the fact that I felt you go, and suddenly I was half of a whole, and I realized that I would never be completely one again, because something important had been torn away from me, and you would never come back. I was unable to do anything after that realization but fall to my knees in the grass and scream, scream like I was dying with you, scream as loud as I could, as if I could bring you back that way. Scream so I couldn't hear, through the haze of lies, that haze of heat laughing as it said, "This is all real!"

With that, the light blue of summer darkened away to blackness, my scream fading away to a sound reminiscent of a cricket's muted chirp in the night.

**xXx**

I blinked, awakened either by a ticking clock or by the sound of my voice being called through the darkness.

"Noll? Noll!" This time the voice was accompanied with a light shaking on my shoulder. I brushed the hand off and struggled to sit up, feeling the bed sheets tangle around my chest.

"Lin?" I asked of the vague shadow perched over my futon. I was in my bedroom, in the apartment.

"Yeah," he replied; a protective presence that banished the worst of the nightmare. I only recalled the sound of an annoying cricket. That, and a vague sense of redness, which was different than my usual nauseous memory of green.

"Why are you here?" I asked, finally wrenching myself into an upright position and tugging the sweat-soaked sheets away from my shirt. I looked at the neon clock—the only source of light in my room—to see that it was just after 12 in the morning.

"You were shouting," Lin answered as nonchalantly as he could, but even though I couldn't see his face I could tell that it had been bad, and that he had been worried. "Was it…him?"

"I don't really—" I started, and then I remembered the dream all over again and doubled over. Lin's hand came down on my shoulder, clenching the fabric as he tried to hold me to reality.

"Yeah," I whispered after a minute. "It was."

Lin sighed sympathetically. "You okay?" As usual, his ever-so-slightly clumsy Japanese was blunt, but wasn't rude. Lin was never rude. Sometimes I wished he was—sometimes I wanted him to grab me and shout and shake until all of the darkness, all of the memories, were thrown out of me. Sometimes I wished that I could just be completely numb, unfeeling; but then at other times I wished that I had been able to cry with such abandon as I had in the dream world. I was stuck in an unhappy medium, stuck in a dream that kept repeating, and I was never able to change the outcome.

"I think I'm alright," I told him. He stood up, shifting his hand from my shirt to my forehead.

"You might have a fever," he told me, his voice slightly condescending. "This is what you get for working too hard. You're running yourself into the ground, Noll. It's no wonder you're getting nightmares."

I shrugged. Fevers weren't abnormal, and they were usually gone by morning. "I'll be fine." He didn't seem convinced, so I smacked his hand away from me and repeated myself, more forcefully. "Lin, I'm fine. I feel okay. I know it was just a dream, so go back to bed. I'm alright."

He hovered awkwardly above the futon. "Fine," he said after a pause. "But knock on the wall if you need anything."

The moment he had left the room, I sprang up from the bed and felt the room swirl sickeningly around me, the dresser and window shimmering in a heat haze that only I could see. Perhaps I was really sick.

Nonetheless, I stumbled my way over to the tall mirror, not acting rationally at all but from some almost primal motivation that told me to move. I was given up to the feeling, determined to follow it through. Like I thought that it would lead me somewhere.

…I looked at the mirror, and I saw you looking back at me.

You and I used to be one and the same, but now there was no more you. It was just me. I was half of what had once been whole, and you—the other half—was lost. Run over by a car and dumped into a picturesque lake.

I blinked so that my vision stopped blurring and glared at the mirror, hearing echoes of wind chimes and your scream echo in my ears as the world started to spin again. Black was starting to creep into the edges of my mind, but I didn't care.

As I looked into the mirror, I thought I saw you smiling. When I held my hand up to the smooth surface, you mimicked my actions, and our hands touched in the middle.

But yours was no longer warm.

The darkness swooped in completely, and I crumpled to the floor, knowing that my mind was dragging me back to that summer day. That ever-repeating summer day. I would have to relive the moment. The cycle had repeated itself for almost a year. I'd realized that this dream—this memory—that moment—would be forever mine to bear a long time ago.

**xXx**

But in this clichéd story, there must be a way to escape.

Beyond that repeating summer day, there must be a way to change.

**xXx**

I opened my eyes, and I was standing by the roadside again, and you were running after that cat. Just like before.

And I was running after you, ignoring that traffic light that suddenly changed to a crimson red.

I didn't stop like I had before, but instead jumped into the road and shoved you aside, and the speeding truck slammed into me instead.

Your eyes went wide as I fell onto the ground, the world flipping horizontally. I could see the reflection of my body in your eyes, the blood that had sprayed everywhere.

You held that cat in your arms, cradling it. You were safe.

In that blessed heat, lying on the road, I smiled at you.

And then we both closed our eyes.

**xXx**

Someone was shouting my name, and I cracked my eyes open to see Lin once again crouching over me.

"Are you alright?" he demanded, and this time there was a little anger in his voice. "I heard a crash, and when I come in here I see you lying on the floor not in your bed and you're burning up!"

I became slowly aware of something cold on my forehead and lifted an aching hand to realize that Lin was holding an ice compress to my head. "I'm fine," I insisted unhappily. "Let me get back to bed and I'll be completely fine." I wanted time to deal with what had just happened. I wanted to analyze what I had just done.

"Noll," Lin growled, and right then he sounded like a parent. "You have a fever of 104. You are not fine. We're taking you to the doctor."

"Lin," I said, matching his tone of voice. "I'm fine. There's no way we're going through the hassle of a doctor tonight."

"We're going," he insisted. "Because you are literally melting the ice in this bag and the fever is not going down at all."

"I'm not sick!" I cried. "Just tired, and over-worked…and stressed, maybe…"

"And sick," he snapped, abandoning me on the ground to flick on the bedroom light. I cringed. "Get up."

"It's past midnight!"

"Up!" he ordered from the doorway. "Now!"

"But Lin!" I shouted sarcastically. "I'm sick! I can't stand up."

He stuck his head back into the doorway to roll his eyes. "I'm sure you'll manage. We're going."

I make a point of crawling back over to the futon until he had left the room, and then I staggered to my feet and winced as the whole world spun around me in a wispy, fever-dulled haze, and I suddenly shivered.

I thought about you as I grabbed a jacket and floundered my way out to the car, and I realized something important. It didn't matter if I had somehow managed to save you. I had a fever, I was sick, I was obviously not in my right mind. That dream had definitely not been a psychic experience, merely a memory. I could not alter memories.

I had not really saved you.

**xXx**

No matter how hard I tried, you were still gone.

I was half of a whole.

**xXx**

I realized all that as we drove through the sluggish traffic towards the hospital, and I found myself blinking away to try and shift the haze that had covered my vision, because I suspected that the blurring of the streetlights wasn't due to the fever.

**xXx**

**I get the feeling that Naru was a bit OOC, but I chalked it up to the fever. And I feel like the Lin-San interactions sort of took away from the seriousness, but I also tried to keep their conversations authentic. **

**And yeah, I changed some of the details of Gene's death to better fit the song. There was no cat involved in the story, and I always imagined that it was a car, not a truck, but I wanted it to fit the song. **

**Please review! Critique is welcome!**

**V Oh come on, all it takes is a few minutes. Just hit the blue button! V**

**vVv**

**V**


End file.
